Hey everybody and welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein and this is the long awaited tinnitus episode. So, there’s a lot to say about tinnitus. And it’s very important to differentiate between a time when tinnitus is a signal of something serious that requires medical attention and maybe imaging studies to see if perhaps there’s really something going on with the auditory pathway with the ear. Sometimes, there can be a tumor, a very small tumor pressing on the auditory nerve. And that is what’s causing the tinnitus. That’s the most severe kind of thing that could be going on. But tinnitus can also be a totally benign and regular typical experience that lots of people have.

So, it can be scary to look up tinnitus on the internet and see the Google searches of, “OMG, Do I have a tumor?” Whereas, it’s also something that’s super, super common and totally not dangerous and, you know, not medically alarming for the most part for most cases. Regardless, across the board, of course, if you are having tinnitus, if you are having ringing, buzzing, or any kinds of sounds in your ears, right away, go see a doctor, specifically an ear, nose and throat specialist or even more specific, a neuro-otologist.

It’s important to get the right proper care and of course to visit an audiologist and get hearing tests because many, many times hearing loss and tinnitus come together. A person can be struggling with and suffering from a tinnitus, from a ringing in the ears that’s bothering them. And then they find out they also have a hearing loss which isn’t the thing that’s bothering them but actually can be related. And once they start using hearing aids or any other treatment to help with the hearing loss, it actually improves their perception of the tinnitus. So, absolutely get a hearing test.

And here are some of those red flags. If the tinnitus is:

* only being heard in one ear and not in both ears * being heard in the head* if it is really, really loud and feels like it’s louder than the sounds around you or louder than people’s speech* if it is a roaring, low frequency* if it is pulsing,

those are all signs that you should absolutely get a medical and an audiological workup, as opposed to the kind of tinnitus that many of us experience which is a very high frequency, like “eeeee” or something like that, which is very soft and quiet and you hear it more when there’s no noise, when you’re in silence. Especially if you’ve just been exposed to a lot of sound, like if you’re coming home from a concert or something, and then you experience that tinnitus, that is something that can be expected. Of course you definitely want to protect your hearing in those situations, so go back and listen to our protect your hearing episode to find out how.

There’s just so many things to understand about tinnitus. It isn’t just one kind of thing. And that’s why you’ve got to see someone who is really trained and has a lot of expertise in this specifically. Which brings me to our fabulous interview today with Dr. Kelly Dyson, who is the tinnitus doctor on Instagram. She and I had a conversation about tinnitus and I’m so excited to play it for you now. Thank you so much for being a listener of the All About Audiology podcast. And we are also celebrating 10,000 downloads. So, thank you for being a listener.